Prince From Minneapolis

Prince continues to fascinate not just music lovers, but also scholars of popular culture, sexuality, and African-American culture. Having curated and presented an exhibition and symposium devoted to the influences of Bruce Springsteen back in 2004, the Weisman Art Museum now turns its sights closer to home with a show and international conference (in April) that examines Prince’s relationship to Minneapolis and Minnesota. The exhibition showcases, in one gallery, stunning images by local photographers Allen Beaulieu, Nancy Bundt, Terry Gydesen, and Robert Whitman, who trained their lenses on the Purple One as he was establishing his look, his sound, and his identity. In other galleries are works ranging from the bizarre and the quotidian, including art dolls of Prince in various settings, seed artist Lillian Colton’s portrait of Prince, glassworks, a bicycle, and a mural—all Prince-related. Meanwhile, the symposium will pose and answer such burning questions as: What were the demographic, cultural, and economic conditions that gave rise to Prince? How did he develop his sound in a predominantly white state? Did he reinvent the aesthetics and politics of blackness? How about notions of black male sexuality? Perhaps we’ll never know.